Benazir Bhutto’s second homecoming on Thursday in two decades had some of the trappings of her first return from exile in 1986 to successfully take on the dictatorship but challenges to the Muslim world’s first woman premier are more daunting this time.

Hoping for her political revival after being in self-imposed exile in London for eight years, the 54-year-old leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is pinning her hopes to become the country’s premier for the third time. She got a rousing welcome in her hometown of Karachi.

She was hailed as the “Daughter of the East” ever since she confronted military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1986.

Bhutto became the country’s premier two years later when she was just 35. She left Pakistan on her own before a court convicted her of corruption charges in April 1999 when Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister. The conviction was later quashed and Bhutto’s brush with law turned a full circle this month.

As part of a possible power-sharing deal, Mush-arraf signed  a corruption amnesty on October 5 covering other cases against Bhutto,paving the way for her return.

Born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy family in southern Pakistan, the mother of three children inherited the political legacy of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was hanged by Gen Zia in 1979. The former president and prime minister sent his eldest daughter to study politics and government at Oxford and Harvard.

But his ouster in a 1977 military coup and execution over the death of a political rival put Benazir, just in her twenties, on a violent brush with the country’s treacherous politics. Benazir was detained several times during the rule of Gen  Zia-ul Haq then released into exile in England in 1984. Two years later, she returned to lead  rallies for the restoration of civilian government.

After Zia’s death in a  plane crash in 1988, Bhutto gave birth to the first of her three children, led her party to a poll victory and became the first woman to lead a Muslim nation.

DELAY IN SHARIF RETURN

Exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party is planning to delay his second return bid to Pakistan till after November 15, when a neutral caretaker government is expected to be in place to supervise next year’s general election.

Sharif, who was exiled after being ousted by General Pervez Musharraf in a bloodless coup in 1999, was deported back to Saudi Arabia within hours of landing here on September 10 despite a Supreme Court ruling that he could return to the country. A final decision on Sharif’s return will be taken at a meeting of the Pakistan Muslim League (N)’s central working committee to be held shortly in London after the former Prime Minister arrives there from Saudi Arabia, party officials were quoted as saying by The Dawn.